short essay on importance of Sanskrit
Answers
In the words of Jawahar Lal Nehru, `the finest heritage of India
is the Sanskrit language and literature. This is a magnificent heritage and
as long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long the
basic genius of India will continue.' As William Jones declared about 200
years ago, Sanskrit is `more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and
more exquisitely refined than either.' Not only has it provided a rich medium
for the expression of the countless ideas and the highest ideals which the
people of India have conceived and pursued during the past ages, but it has
also deeply influenced and effectively moulded the varied cultural patterns
of millions upon millions of people living in so many other lands extending
in all the four directions, thousands of miles beyond the frontiers of India.
It is a veritable mirror of Indian civilization and culture, being the
repository of a mass of literature which has given expression to the
intellect and the spirit of India in her progressive march through the great
creative ages. This literature is copiously rich in religion, philosophy,
law, linguistics, aesthetics, fine arts, positive and technical sciences,
gnomic and didactic verse and belles-lettres. It easily transcends in extent
anything which any ancient or mediaeval literature could show. At the top of
it, a very large proportion of it possesses an extraordinarily high quality
which has to be taken into account in assessing its importance not only for
the people of India but for the entire mankind.
It is, however, not a merely classical language, just enshrining the
ancient literature of India. It is much more and something of much greater
significance. As a language it is an instrument of the greatest precision
in the delineation of all thought-processes, however deep and subtle, and
of all forms of aesthetic and motional perception as well as of spiritual
intuition and experience. Its study involving the rigorous dialectics of its
grammar and different systems of Philosophy forms an intellectual discipline
of the highest order. As a most sonorous and most musical language, it makes
a never-failing appeal to the deeper aesthetic sensibility of one and all. In
sooth, it has the power to lift us above ourselves, which is one of its most
subtle aesthetic and dynamic appeals. Up till very recent time, Sanskrit as
a force that welled out from within suifused all aspects of Indian life with
the waters of a hidden stream of power and beauty, making them flourish with
vigour. Intellect of India found its culmination in it and, in its turn, it
has been and still is the one common reservoir from which all the later Indian
and many Greater Indian languages have been drawing their sap and sustenance.
Sanskrit has always been effective in binding together, culturally, the People
living in all the parts of India. In this unifying force of Sanskrit lies its
paramount importance for India of the Present day. The more this perennial
substratum of emotional oneness and cultural harmony Will flourish, the less
the fissiparous propensities, which being a part of the game could not. be
totally ruled out, Will find it possible to exercise their evil influence
towards undermining the political unity of the country.